Program NoteAccording to the Ives Catalogue by John Kirkpatrick, Ives’ own records and memos indicate that the Concord Sonata was mostly composed, or more exactly recomposed, in 1911-12, from the unfinished scores of the Orchard House Overture (1904), the Emerson Concerto (1907), and the Hawthorne Concerto (1910). Though Ives played the whole Sonata for a friend in 1912, he considered the last two movements not finished until 1915. The Essays Before A Sonata were written in 1919. In 1920, both the Sonata and the Essays were privately printed, the engraving of the Sonata being done by G. Schirmer, Inc., and the printing of the Essays by The Knickerbocker Press.
The revised edition of the Sonata was prepared by Ives himself in 1940-47, with considerable help from George F. Roberts, and was published in 1947 by Arrow Music Press. This Arrow edition, subsequently acquired by Associated Music Publishers, Inc., appears here as an unaltered reprint.